Frankly, I thought Sadie Katz was kind of a nut when I talked to her last March about her search for Bill Murray.

Katz made a film titled “The Bill Murray Experience” about her Homer-like Odyssey to meet the former “Saturday Night Live” star. I figured a detached glimpse at her journey might turn into a good story for me.

Murray has a cult-like following, not unlike people who tail Bob Dylan from city to city. You can Google “Bill Murray Experience” and get a dozen websites, including “The 12 Greatest (Real) Bill Murray Stories Ever Told” by Ranker; “8 Things Bill Murray Can Teach You About Living An Amazing Life” on the Huffington Post, and “Bill Murray Stories – No One Will Ever Believe You,” on (wait for it)… BillMurrayStories.com

The Vimeo website for Katz’ “The Bill Murray Experience” didn’t make the top 10 searches for Bill Murray experiences. But a Variety review of another documentary about searching for Bill Murray did crack the top 10. “Friend of Bill,” produced by The New Yorker last year as a part of an Amazon Originals series, is about people who attend a self-help meeting to discuss their hilarious encounters with Murray.

While Murray might be the Moby Dick of our time, I had no idea I would find myself pursuing the figurative white whale. I would have said, "OK, call me Ishmael." But I had no idea I would become Ahab.

Katz dangled the bait in front of my face when her publicist sent me a press release announcing her “Bill Murray” film had been accepted into the American Documentary Film Festival. I bit like it was a heroin sandwich. I agreed to talk to Katz as this craving to tell a great story overtook my senses, festering like a runny nose that wouldn’t stop for the next seven months, when I literally got close enough to reach out and touch him.

The addiction begins

The press release arrived around the time the McCallum Theatre announced it would open its season with a performance by Bill Murray and a cellist, violinist and pianist. McCallum President and CEO Mitch Gershenfeld had learned Murray was going to be singing serious music and reciting classic American literature with a chamber trio in Santa Barbara and realized he had a rare opportunity to add to the McCallum canon.

He had booked Woody Allen to play Dixieland music and Steve Martin to play bluegrass. With Murray singing songs like “Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair,” he’d only need to get Billy Crystal to do hip-hop and David Letterman to perform EDM to corner the market on great baby-boomer comics performing stuff they’re not known for.

I called Katz thinking, “If she made a documentary on Bill Murray, maybe she could help me get an interview with him under the pretext that the story would help sell tickets to the McCallum season. I knew he’d never give me an interview just to try to fill a few seats at one show. But, if it would also promote a movie about him and the near future success of the local performing arts, well, maybe he’d want to kill three birds with one stone.

What I didn’t know until I got Katz on the phone was that Katz never did talk to Bill Murray. The movie was about how she gathered some friends to create their own Bill Murray experience. But, when Murray proved more elusive than expected, Katz’s girlfriends begin dropping out of the project and dropping her as a friend. After a two-year chase, spending money she didn’t have just to give him a bunch of balloons, her friends questioned her sanity.

Still, I was so intoxicated about writing something on Bill Murray, I saw a preview of Katz’ documentary. It basically tells you what not to do to have a Bill Murray experience. You must realize that frustration is funnier than satisfaction, and Murray will always pursue the path to laughter.

So, I wrote about Gershenfeld’s experience watching Bill Murray. In fact, I wrote about his Bill Murray experience more often than I’ve written about anyone’s experience viewing somebody else. I knew intellectually it wouldn't get me a Murray interview, but I wasn't being driven by intellect. It was a chemical need to have a Bill Murray experience.

Finally, September came along and I asked the McCallum publicist if there was any way to get a Bill Murray interview? She put me in touch with the PR person for the cellist, Jan Vogler.

Vogler, a former child prodigy from Germany, met Murray at an airport, where Murray saw him checking his cello for travel and couldn’t resist asking if he planned to put that in the overhead compartment. They became friends and agreed to record an album and do a show in Germany with Vogler’s chamber trio. The album became “New Worlds” and its Sept. 29 release led to a tour taking them to Symphony Center, Chicago, on Oct. 10; Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, Oct. 11, and Carnegie Hall on Oct. 16.

Then, after a short break, the foursome returns to the West Coast for a concert at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland. Only Bill Murray would follow Carnegie Hall with a gig at the Arlene Schnitzer.

The final hunt

Vogler’s publicist said Bill Murray not only doesn’t have a publicist, he doesn’t have a manager. People reach him by knowing his cell phone number and she didn’t have it. In fact, a week before his Friday concert in Santa Barbara, she had no idea where he was. His primary residence is Charleston, N.C., but he also reportedly has homes in Los Angeles and Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.; Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, and Palisades, N.Y. He also has family in Illinois, where he's a notoriously devoted Chicago Cubs fan, and he’s a part-owner of a restaurant in St. Augustine, Fla., and a minor league baseball team in St. Paul, Minn.

He could have been anywhere. But Vogler’s publicist told me he and Vogler were being driven from Santa Barbara to Palm Desert on Saturday, and they were doing two interviews to promote their album for Universal Music. She'd try to fit me in if I would agree to interview Vogler and Murray equally. I said I would. Anything to satisfy my Bill Murray jones, if that makes sense.

I noticed the Cubs were playing the Washington Nationals in the National League playoffs at 2:30 p.m. and I knew their hotel check-in would probably be 3 p.m. So they’d probably want to leave early and maybe do a late afternoon sound check at the McCallum.

Then I panicked. I had a 10 a.m. appointment with a possible financial adviser in Palm Desert. I had already met with him for 90 minutes and had spent another hour downloading all my financial information for him to study. If I didn’t take this 10 a.m. meeting, I wouldn’t get my $100 gift certificate to the Cheesecake Factory.

So I took along a tape recorder and told Craig Misuradze of Agewise Financial I had to keep my cell phone on because Bill Murray could be calling. If he called while discussing my stocks and bonds portfolio, I'd have to go to another room.

I kept watching my phone as he told me my IRA Roth Account had a 31 percent turnover fee when it should be closer to 20 percent. I kept getting distracted thinking, how can I make a conversation with Bill Murray and a cellist “buzzy.”

Hours went by and I finished my financial consultation with no further clue on whether or not Murray and Vogler would be calling soon. Then the publicist told me Murray had decided not to do any interviews. In fact, he hadn’t done any interviews since August. Later, I discovered he decided to fly his chamber musicians to the Thermal Airport.

But I had tickets to the McCallum and my cravings for a Bill Murray experience were now more desperate than ever.

Bill Murray and Friends performed Saturday at the McCallum Theatre.(Photo: Submitted)

My anxiety wasn't helped by his opening recitation of Ernest Hemingway’s “Did You Ever Play A Musical Instrument?” from the Paris Review’s “The Art of Fiction.” He read it seriously, from a podium, and it was, well, boring. Then he read excerpts from Walt Whitman and James Fenimore Cooper, interspersed with music by Vogler’s superb trio, and I suddenly no longer felt like getting up and joining the growing crowd of Bill Murray fans at the back stage door.

I realized Murray was establishing respect for the classic literature he was reciting. By the time he got to George Gershwin’s “Ain’t Necessarily So” from “Porgy and Bess,” he was loosening up. You could tell he has this innate sense of cool. His vocals swung with no sense of irony and it was fun. By the time he got to Van Morrison’s “When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God,” he was acting out each lyric in a way that matched the ferocity with which his trio was playing. It was getting amazing.

Then he recited from Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” astonishingly using the “N” word like it was no big deal because it was needed for authenticity.

He concluded with “Somewhere” and “I Feel Pretty” from “West Side Story” and hilarity ensued. Then he sang “America,” and one verse was left hanging in the air: “Nobody knows Puerto Rico is in America.”

Suddenly, you realized it had all led to this. And Bill Murray is a genius. Like Charlie Chaplin, he combines physical comedy with a conscience, which is why he is the greatest comic actor of our time.

For an encore, he went into the audience to distribute a bouquet of roses he had been given on stage. When he couldn’t throw a rose into the mezzanine, he began climbing over seats, row by row, until he reached my row. He threw a rose into the balcony and began walking toward me at the end of the aisle.

This was my Bill Murray experience. I could literally reach out and touch him. Or trip him, if I had wanted. I could have said, “Hey, Bill: About that interview.” But I just let him walk by. My craving for a Bill Murray experience had been satisfied.